


Through a Rear Window

by Blizzard96



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-06
Updated: 2017-04-06
Packaged: 2018-10-15 20:41:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10557402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blizzard96/pseuds/Blizzard96
Summary: AU where the Hansens and the Murphys are neighbors, and Evan breaks his leg in the fall instead of his arm.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Please read the tags and proceed with caution.

“This is for lunch,” Heidi said, pressing a wrinkled twenty dollar bill into Evan’s hand. “And use it this time, please. You need to eat something.” Evan nodded and grunted, not looking away from his breakfast plate. His mother sighed. “I mean it.”

“Yeah, sure,” Evan replied, one of his hands slipped down to scratch at his leg, only to drag along the bumpy cast. He squirmed as the itch intensified.

“It’s only one more week, and then you’ll be able to use crutches and get back in school,” Heidi continued, stuffing folders into her bag. “Won’t that be a relief?”

“Uh-huh,” Evan muttered. “Sounds great.” Though he was practically out of his mind with boredom, he wanted nothing less than to go to school. He briefly wondered if breaking his other leg would keep him out of school for another week. The thought was hastily abandoned as he remembered how he got into this mess in the first place. He was in no shape to go climbing again anyways.

“I love you,” his mother said, regaining Evan’s attention. He finally raised his head to see her give him a tired smile.

He responded with a fake smile that looked more like a grimace. “I love you too,” he recited. His mother was gone with a final “Don’t forget to buy lunch!”. Evan dropped the twenty on the table and picked up his fork to push his eggs around his plate. He had no plans for the rest of the day. He couldn’t even text Jared since the other boy would be in class. Evan found it pretty depressing that his contact list was exhausted after considering one person.

“Fuck you!” Evan flinched at the yell. He whipped around to look out the kitchen window. Across a narrow sidewalk he was able to see into the wide windows of his neighbor’s house. 

The Murphy’s were all sitting around the dining table. The voice he’d heard had evidently been Connor Murphy, a fellow senior at Evan’s school. Connor was glaring at his family, eyes darting to each member with equal amounts of irritation.

“Fuck you!” Zoe Murphy, Connor’s younger sister, shot back. She stared her brother down, the tension practically palpable from where Evan was sitting. The siblings’ mother looked exasperated but also unsurprised. Their father continued reading the newspaper, either oblivious or willfully ignorant to the state of his family. Apparently this was a common routine within the Murphy house.

Evan watched Connor yank his sling bag off the back of his chair and storm out of the kitchen while Zoe made a face at her brother’s retreating back. Zoe grabbed her own backpack moments later, and her father absentmindedly kissed his wife on the cheek before heading out himself. Mrs. Murphy began clearing the table with a resigned look on her face. Just a few minutes afterward he saw Connor and Zoe head get in one car, the two still bickering, while their father got in another. Both cars pulled out on their respective routes. 

Evan turned back to his breakfast, feeling a bit like a creep. He’d been living next to the Murphy’s for a few years ever since they moved there in eighth grade. Despite this, he’d never had the impulse before to watch the family (not even for Zoe, no matter what Jared might imply). It just felt like an invasion of privacy. 

But now, Evan was stuck in a wheelchair for a week and bored out of his mind. There was nothing on TV during the day that he really wanted to watch, and there were only so many times he could skim through YouTube videos and Netflix nature documentaries. He wheeled himself into the living room and shifted from the wheelchair to the couch, which had recently been made up into a bed of sorts. He’d been sleeping there for the past few days since his room was up a flight of stairs.

He flipped open his laptop and it whirred to life. Evan clicked around various social media sites for about an hour, only to find himself back at a loss for what to do. A flip through the television channels for another hour just revealed a variety of home shopping programs and sitcom reruns. Frustrated, he shut off the TV and picked up his laptop again, opening a Word document. If nothing else, he could at least do his therapy assignment that he’d been putting off for the past week.

 

_Dear Evan Hansen,_

 

_Today is going to be a good day, and here’s why:_

 

Evan paused, the cursor blinking at him mockingly. 

 

_You didn’t have to go to school today, which means that no one’s staring at you. Not that they really did anyways. You just thought they were staring at you, which they weren’t, but today you don’t even have to worry about that because you can sit on the couch all day by yourself. Isn’t that what you wanted?_

_You also got to see Zoe Murphy. Well, you didn’t talk to her, or even make eye contact, but at least you got to see the person you’ve pinned all your hopes on. Maybe when you get your crutches next week you’ll be able to actually talk to her for the first time._

_Sincerely your best and most dearest friend,_

_Me_

 

He sighed, saving the document. He’d probably go through it later to make it less worrying for his mother and therapist. Evan lay back on the couch, propping his foot up more on some of the throw pillows. Even though he was terrified of talking to people, the silence of the house set him even more on edge. He shut his eyes and tried to will himself to sleep, eventually managing an uneasy slumber.

 

* * *

 

The honk of a horn jolted him awake. He flailed without thinking, sending a sharp pain through his injured leg. “Ow!” he muttered, stilling immediately. He rubbed at his bleary eyes and glanced over the back of the couch and out the living room window.

Outside, he could see Connor Murphy scowling at his mother, and the other woman didn’t look to be much happier. Mrs. Murphy was holding the car keys in her hand, and Evan guessed he’d been woken up when she’d locked the car.

“-riously, Connor?” Mrs. Murphy was saying. “It’s the first day of school and I’ve already gotten a phone call that you’ve shoved a kid in the halls?”

“I told you I shouldn’t have gone this morning!” Connor snapped. “Leave me alone!”

“We’re not done yet!” She replied, sounding frustrated. Her son paid her no heed and stalked into the house, slamming the door behind him. Evan could see Mrs. Murphy’s shoulders sag for a second before she straightened and followed her son into the house. Evan knew he was being nosy, but that didn’t stop him from quickly shifting up to get into his chair and wheeling back through the hallways into the kitchen. When he glanced through the window he could see Mrs. Murphy in the kitchen, talking to someone on the phone. She was running a hand through her hair.

Evan wheeled through a longer hallway and into his mom’s room. When he chanced a look out the window, he could see straight into Connor’s room. Connor had presumably locked the door, and was playing music so loud that Evan could hear a distorted version of it from where he sat. The boy himself was flopped on his bed, staring at the ceiling. Evan quickly wheeled out of his mom’s room and back into the kitchen so Connor wouldn’t spot him.

Back in the kitchen Evan didn’t see Mrs. Murphy anymore, so she had presumably moved either further into the house or upstairs. Evan was a bit relieved by that, as he no longer felt the urge to spy on the other family. He continued back to the living room and picked up his laptop.

Upon opening the lid, he found his earlier letter still up on the screen, and he grimaced. He felt a sense of shame wash through him upon re-reading the words. He was a senior in high school, and he only had one (family) friend to show for it along with severe social anxiety and, he glanced at his leg, well, that. He deleted the letter.

 

~~~~~

 

The days passed sluggishly. It was only Wednesday, and Evan was ready to scream. Or at least get outside and _do something_. He wished he could drive down to the park, or at least walk around the neighborhood, but to do that he would have to be able to get down the front steps, and there was no way he’d be able to accomplish that without help.

Evan glanced at the clock to see it was only 4:30, still hours before his mom would return home from work. He was sitting at the kitchen table on his laptop, endlessly scrolling through Twitter. He had no idea what some of the trending topics were, but it was at least passing the time. His phone beeped, signaling that it was time to take his pills.

He sighed, wheeling back into his mom’s room where she’d left his medication after grabbing a glass and struggling to fill it with water. He downed the pills and water quickly, and glanced absentmindedly out the window. He nearly dropped the glass of water when he saw Connor through the window. His heart restarted when he realized Connor wasn’t even looking in his direction.

Evan frowned as he watched the other boy pull out what appeared to be a prescription bottle full of pills. He hadn’t known that the other boy took medication, though Evan guessed he shouldn’t be surprised since Jared had often called Connor the “freak who threw a printer in second grade”. He was not expecting Connor to dump way too many pills into his palm and then swallow them dry.

Evan was stunned for a second, unable to process what he’d just seen, before he fumbled for his cell phone. He clumsily unlocked it, taking a few tries to get his passcode right because of how badly his hands were shaking. All he could see was his own pills on the desk and the world blurring around him like he was falling from thirty feet up all over again. 

He finally managed to pull up his keypad, glancing out the window just in time to see Connor sitting on his bed. They made eye contact, and Evan nearly dropped his phone. A tinny voice from the device jolted Evan back to reality.

“911, please state the nature of your emergency.”

“Yes, hello?!” Evan blurted. “I think I just saw someone overdose, I mean they took way too many pills and now,” Evan glanced up, “and now he’s just not moving and you need to get here fast and-“

“Sir, please tell me where you are.”

“W-What? Oh, yeah,” Evan managed to rattle off his address, “but you don’t need to come to my house, you need to go to my neighbors’ house. The Murphys? I-I just saw their son, Connor Murphy collapse when I looked out my window. Please hurry! It’s been at least a few minutes since he took all those pills…”

He had no idea how long it took after the call, but Evan soon heard a siren racing up the street. He wheeled into the kitchen and watched as an ambulance pulled up in the Murphy’s driveway and a team of paramedics jumped out with a gurney. One of them pounded on the front door and was answered moments later by Connor’s bewildered mother. He couldn’t hear what the paramedic said, but Mrs. Murphy’s face twisted in horror and she let them through immediately, pointing behind her to a door. Evan watched as the paramedics came back out in nearly no time at all with Connor strapped to the gurney and Mrs. Murphy close behind them, sobbing. They all piled into the back of the ambulance, which screeched away.

Evan finally released a shallow breath he’d been holding, but couldn’t manage to unclench his fingers from the arms of the chair. His lungs tightened again when he replayed how still Connor had looked when he’d be brought out and the devastated expression on Mrs. Murphy’s face. He could feel it getting harder for him to breathe and he quickly wheeled away from the window and back to the couch.

He threw himself onto the couch, paying no attention to his injured leg, and buried his face in his hands, breathing hard. It felt like he couldn’t get enough oxygen. All he could see was Connor’s eyes looking straight through him. It felt like he was falling. When he lowered his hands from his face, they came away wet, and he knew he was crying. He just needed to hold on hold on _holdonholdonholdon_...

_Breathe_

He let go.

**Author's Note:**

> I recently watched Hitchcock's film Rear Window, which is what inspired this. I don't know if I'll continue, but if I don't, feel free to imagine that Everybody Lives and there is Communication and Happy Endings all around.


End file.
